Hook, line and sinker / Oakland fishmonger has been baiting customers for 62 years

Rona Marech

Published
4:00 am PST, Friday, January 25, 2002

Abe Abraham packages up some fish at the Housewives Market with help from his son Brad Abraham (only hands showing). Abraham, former Glober Trotter, has been selling fish in Oakland for 62 years. He's 78 and still going strong.
Photo by Lea Suzukid/SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE less

Abe Abraham packages up some fish at the Housewives Market with help from his son Brad Abraham (only hands showing). Abraham, former Glober Trotter, has been selling fish in Oakland for 62 years. He's 78 and ... more

Photo: LEA SUZUKI

Photo: LEA SUZUKI

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Abe Abraham packages up some fish at the Housewives Market with help from his son Brad Abraham (only hands showing). Abraham, former Glober Trotter, has been selling fish in Oakland for 62 years. He's 78 and still going strong.
Photo by Lea Suzukid/SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE less

Abe Abraham packages up some fish at the Housewives Market with help from his son Brad Abraham (only hands showing). Abraham, former Glober Trotter, has been selling fish in Oakland for 62 years. He's 78 and ... more

Photo: LEA SUZUKI

Hook, line and sinker / Oakland fishmonger has been baiting customers for 62 years

He claims he knows how to read customers, like a fisherman eyes the tides. He'll look you up and down, listen to the way you talk, then sell you the fish you grew up eating. Catfish or Louisiana buffalo or crawfish or crabs -- oh girl, he has 35, 40 varieties of fish, and he's got your number.

The hard-working, rhyme-making, gumbo-producing, resident oldtimer and flirt of Swan's Market has been selling fish for 62 years, enough time to figure out that people from the South eat fish with bones and Walnut Creek types want "fillet, fillet, fillet."

"I'd follow him wherever he went," said Gloria Lockett, who has been buying from Abraham for 30 years. He always has fresh fish, she said, and plenty of sweet somethins' to dish out. "I've seen him flirt with -- I don't know how many people."

It's true, all true. Abraham -- once widowed, once divorced and a father five times over -- won't deny the charges about his fish or his sugar-talking ways.

"I'm like Jesus Christ -- I love them all," said Abraham, who lives in Fremont. "I ain't gonna marry no more. Why should I marry one woman and make her miserable when I can stay single and make them all happy?"

At 78, Abraham is unbowed and has a surprisingly smooth face -- save the deep rivulets running around his mouth and the distinguished crease over his nose. When he talks, in a rich voice with a hint of gravel, his knobby hands skitter, slice the air, and, occasionally, crash down on whatever surface is handy. For emphasis.

He loves to tell stories, darlin', and he has plenty of them up the sleeve of the mustard yellow apron he wears every day. Born in Tulsa, Okla., Abraham was playing basketball with the Globetrotters' farm club, the Kansas City Stars, and baseball with the Tulsa Black Oilers when World War II broke out. He left sports -- "back in them days, you couldn't make the big money" -- to join the Air Force.

Abraham quickly rose to sergeant and trained black soldiers in the segregated forces. He claims he invented "jive cadence," the practice of calling out commands in rhymes. "I'm the man," he said. "This is the God's truth."

After three years in the service, in Texas, Louisiana, New York, England and France, Abraham moved to the Bay Area. For a while, he continued working with the Globetrotters as a coach and scout, but fish, he said, was in his blood. Following in his father's footsteps, he became a fisherman, opening the Freshwater Fish Company and taking out a 31-foot boat called -- what else? -- " 'Abe,' honey. Me!"

That was followed by Abraham's Fish Grotto, a seafood bar in Richmond that had a jukebox and catered to local youngsters, and a vegetable and meat market in downtown Oakland called Abraham's. Then there was a decades-long gig with Moura's Fish Company at Sixth Street and Housewives Market. When Housewives was relocated and turned into the new Swan's Market, he jettisoned the old name, leftover from the previous owner, and christened his fish counter Abraham's Housewives Seafood.

Along the way, the unstoppable Abraham also grew watermelons, ran Abraham's Lumber Sales, a lumberyard and building demolition business business in Richmond, and occasionally helped the Globetrotters with publicity. He still farms around 30 acres of watermelons in Colusa and Yolo counties. He also owns some real estate in El Cerrito. And to this day, when the Globetrotters are in town, Abraham removes his black rubber boots and fish apron, puts on a clean outfit and off he goes.

They still announce him -- have him stand and wave to the crowd -- and he still brings along a pot of his gumbo. Back in the day, he once served his famous gumbo to Muhammad Ali, Sammy Davis Jr. and Jane Fonda at a Globetrotters fund-raising event.

Even though people drove through the rain during the holiday season to pick up a copy of his gumbo recipe, and even though Abraham has customers of 50 years, business at Swan's Market is lamentably slow these days. The re-opening of the marketplace in 1999 came along with high hopes for development in old Oakland, but like other sellers, Abraham is just breaking even. He blames a dearth of nearby parking, "but I figure I can wait. I'm a fighter," he said. "A man with my kind of talent. . ."

He has a 10-year lease and as for retirement -- Ha! He has already traveled the world between the service and the Globetrotters, and just sitting around in his easy chair is only going to wear him down. No, waking at 4 a.m. and working long, long days during watermelon season -- now that's good for a man. Even a near-octagenarian.

"Honest to God, I ain't lying to you -- people who know me say, 'You're not human.' " he said. "Yes I am. I don't drink, smoke or rip and run. All you need is a good woman." (Or several, as the case may be.)

As the 1954 Globetrotters movie -- apparently featuring an appearance by Oakland's very own king of fish -- commands: "Go, Man, Go."